Mary Smith wrote in the comments of Going West – Walking with Angels,“Can’t help but notice there is a lot of shadowing going on in your most recent posts and am wondering where you are leading us?” I spent a while writing a response as long as a blog post before I took the hint…

The ‘shadowing’ that Mary refers to is the apparent… and disputed… reproduction in the stone of many ancient monuments of prominent features in the landscape. A monolith in a stone circle that aligns with and captures the shape of a nearby peak… the capstone of a tomb that follows the contours of the horizon… and in some places, whole arrangements of stone that seem to mirror, in miniature, the skyline of the land in which it stands.

There are many who dismiss the idea as fanciful. There are many who speculate upon the unlikelihood of primitive man being able to envision or achieve such feats… regardless of the scale and precision of places like Stonehenge, Avebury or Silbury. Bearing in mind that these same primitive ancestors were contemporary with the pyramid builders of Egypt, we feel that there may be more than just the visible monument to understand at these ancient sites, but as their builders are long gone, only the silent stones remain to plead their case.

Over the past century or so, many theories have moved from precarious positions on the lunatic fringe into the accepted realms of archaeology. We cannot know all the answers to what was being built into the sites that remain, any more than it is possible to replicate the entire picture of a jigsaw puzzle when half the pieces are missing. However, the work of pioneers like Alexander Thom and John Michell, building upon the work of Aubrey Burl, William Stukeley and their ilk, has carried forward the notion of a knowledge of geometry, land and sky that is far in advance of that for which the ‘primitives’ were once given credit.

There are now hundreds, if not thousands, of books proposing theories about the sacred geometry that our ancestors used in constructing ancient sites of sanctity worldwide. The plethora of theories, some of them very far-fetched, often clouds the central agreement that there was an understanding of geometry in use, thousands of years before Pythagoras was born. It may not have been the intellectual application of degrees and angles that we know today. It may have been closer to an artistic vision that understood the rightness of harmony… but whatever it was, its mark on the landscape provides a fascinating study for the mathematically minded.

Pioneers of archaeoastronomy were also dismissed with their lunatic theories. It is now a part of mainstream archaeology. The idea is not that our ancestors had scientific knowledge that rivalled that acquired by NASA, but more that they understood the movement and cycles of the heavens. If all you have to look at when the fire flickers low is the vault of stars above, you are going to see more than we do, when the light of the stars is drowned by our cities, cars and televisions. What was learned through such observation was woven into symbolic stories and they learned how to use their understanding, creating structures to capture, record and predict the passing of the heavenly bodies through their cycles. For what reason? Again, we do not know for certain… but we know that they did.

The record left by the ancients in these Isles is enigmatic. There are no written documents dating from that time, unlike Egypt, for example, where the cultural remains of an ancient people allow us to appreciate their sophistication. When researching the Egyptian myths for The Osiriad, I was astonished by the depth of knowledge and understanding the myths encapsulated, both of human psychology and their understanding of the natural world, going right back to their stories of Creation. Some archaeologists assert that as only people’s actions, not their thoughts, are preserved in the archaeological record, we cannot know anything about how ancient minds worked. One modern branch of the science is cognitive archaeology that looks at precisely that, seeking to trace back, through the artefacts that remain, to the thoughts of ancient peoples and the meanings of the symbolic structures they have left us.

We are not without some points of reference. Ancient cultures that did leave a written record, surviving cultures and those indigenous peoples who straddle both past and present, all give us clues into how the mind of ‘primitive’ man may have worked. In Britain there seems to have been no tradition of preserving words other than through the oral tradition that continued into our early history with the teaching stories we now call myths. Cognitive archaeology is perhaps the best chance we have, using mainstream methods, of finding answers.

It isn’t just about the mainstream disciplines though. There are others that have been, or still are, looked at askance by the formal sciences. Some pseudo-archaeologists, quite rightly so, in my personal opinion, it has to be said. Neither Stuart nor I have any objection to being consigned to the lunatic fringe. We do the reading and the research in order to learn about the sites we visit… usually after we have visited them…and that is the extent of our formal knowledge. What we do have is deep love of these ancient places and we spend as much time with them as our daily lives allow. It doesn’t really matter to us how these sites were built, though we will marvel at their engineering and their beauty and ponder the reasons why; it is enough that they were and that they remain, shrouded in mystery and requiring more than a brief visit to marvel and capture with a camera the wonders of an ancient world.

This mirroring of the landscape in the stones of the sites is not something you would notice on a casual visit… or if you did, you would probably note and dismiss it. Yet, when it is something you see over and over again, no matter where you go, then you start to take notice. We are not the first to have noticed it, but now we look for it.

We called it ‘mirroring’ for a long time, an accepted term, until Stuart stated a fact so obvious that it had escaped us; a mirror image reverses the object… and these stones do not. They follow the lie of the land and do not create a mirror image. They are more like shadows.

We don’t know the reasons why… but it seems as if our ancestors tried to capture the essence of a sacred landscape… the contour, for example, of a hill that looks like a recumbent goddess, or a landscape feature that seems unique… and embody that in their stones. Maybe they were creating a miniature version of something they held as a manifestation of the divine…a microcosmic representation of the macrocosm. Maybe they wished to place their dead in tombs consecrated by that shadowed image. Maybe they saw them as portals to the Otherworld… we cannot know.

One thing we have learned, though, is that the sites are not placed upon the landscape, but within it. The stones cannot be looked at on their own but need to be seen as part of a greater whole. What we glimpse in these places we may never find the words for; it is not knowledge or certainty in the accepted sense, but it is in spending time within the landscape, both natural and created, that understanding shifts and sparkles.

Some of our experiences at these sites seem to suggest an idea of inner voyaging that would accord well with the shamanic practices still extant…and some of those experiences we have shared in our books. The ancient folk were not so very different from ourselves… the frame of their days might seem unfamiliar to our eyes, but the basic needs and aspirations of humanity change only in form, not in essence. To sit, open to silence, within an ancient circle of stones and look beyond to the hills is to see through your own eyes and that of any other human being from any age of the world. What they saw with their understanding of their own era, we see with the questions of our own… but the land remains.

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About Sue Vincent

Sue Vincent is a Yorkshire-born writer and one of the Directors of The Silent Eye, a modern Mystery School. She writes alone and with Stuart France, exploring ancient myths, the mysterious landscape of Albion and the inner journey of the soul. Find out more at France and Vincent. She is owned by a small dog who also blogs.
Follow her at scvincent.com and on Twitter @SCVincent. Find her books on Goodreads and follow her on Amazon worldwide to find out about new releases and offers. Email: findme@scvincent.com.

48 Responses to Alternative archaeology

Fascinating…yes, I remember how all these theories were dismissed as rubbish not even that long ago…Reading your words about sacred geometry and the shadowing of sacred sites was brilliant, like confirmation of something people always knew but were afraid to admit…sorry, rambling, but these reminders from the past are something we should look at and learn from, treasure our links with our ancestors…great post!!

Thanks, Samantha. Pretty much any advance in thought and understanding is first greeted with ridicule… then eventually adopted and turned respectable. It tends to be what the establishment sees as the lunatic fringe that brings in the new ideas and approaches.

I think so too. There is a theory that all time is but one single scintilla and that all things happen at one, linear time being the way we have created in order to observe and experience life, picking a single thread from the skein.

I am glad that you qualified that with all the best senses of the word as a lot of professors unfortunately want to stay “above” their students, so they make sure that what they teach is either so above anything a normal human being can understand, or that they tell us everything we offer up that WE know about it is wrong. This from my own experience in the university, and I have a degree in archaeology and actually worked in the field once. This was back in the day, so things might have changed, or at least one can hope.

Very interesting. I’m not qualified to take a position on the likelihood or otherwise of any particular theory of sacred geometry. I will say, though, that I’d be surprised if our ancient ancestors did not have an intimate knowledge of the movement and cycles of the stars and planets. In a world without television, I’ll bet they spent a lot of time watching the sky. 🙂

I’m no mathematician either, but when you see how it works, you don’t really need the maths… it is all about shape and form.
Yes, they had no option really but to know the night sky and its cycles pretty well 🙂

Well, I am very glad I noticed your shadowing references and asked the question. I love the idea of a sacred geometry being something felt/understood as harmonious. Your photos show very clearly what you mean about the stones shadowing the land. I will look more closely next time I visit any Stones. And I really want to see those ones you’ve walked us round in Wales.

I’m glad you asked too, Mary… a good excuse for me to waffle…and organise some thoughts. Somewhere I have oodles of photos of these sites, though getting the camera to capture what the eye can see is not easy for some reason. I hope you get down to Wales though… the stones there are spectacular and we only havd time to scratch the surface.

Maybe, like cave paintings, it is art in a pure form. They loved the beauty around them, so why NOT attempt to capture it? Why should that seem strange? Why WOULDN’T they want to do it? Certainly our ancestors have shown remarkable artistic skills, so … ? To me, this doesn’t require an explanation.

I agree that beauty for beauty’s sake is as good an explanation as any, though I have to wonder at the manpower and dedication involved in splitting and lifting those stones. It would have had to have been a communal effort and, given the work involved in survival back then, art for art’s sake alone, on that scale, would probably not have been a priority. But art for a purpose they deemed necessary to the community’s wellbeing, that I can see.

I think often in primitive cultures, there was a joining of art and practicality, for there are many things that could have been done without making them so artistic in nature. I think of pottery which is definitely designed with a practicality in mind, but also sometimes it is quite artistic as well. They were just better connected whereas our contemporary minds, so full of so many distractions if you will, tend to separate things of practicality and artistic nature very often. To see the beauty of something that has a practical purpose cannot be denied; it is found everywhere in the cultures of the ancients.

I once came up with a theory of why more men seemed to have better long-distance vision than women, and I concluded that part of the reason was that men had to do the hunting and look out for enemies approaching, while women did the gathering of fruits and vegetables and other edibles and also stitched and prepared animal skins, etc. But then how would some men have short-distance vision and also some women have more long-distance vision, and so I realized that some men specialized in making the weapons and maintaining them and other tools used, and some women might have served as the lookouts for dangers or or for the return of the men for their encampments. Now it doesn’t really matter if this theory is correct or not, but it just shows how people can be and are multi-dimensional, even in the most primitive of societies. Thank you kindly.

The early stages of our evolution would, of necessity, have been shaped by need, but we have been gifted with a capacity for beauty, both in nature and in art… and I doubt that is something we can live without. Creating art brings us closer to Creation.

Those who sell primitive man short tell much more about themselves and their ignorance in doing so. Yet I must disagree with you on the stones. One of the many things I love about Europe is the stones. If you are silent and listen with an open mind and heart, they will tell you. Here where the Inquisition left Mediterranean soil saturated in blood, you can still here the cries and the stories. ” We don’t know the reasons why… but it seems as if our ancestors tried to capture the essence of a sacred landscape… the contour, for example, of a hill that looks like a recumbent goddess, or a landscape feature that seems unique… and embody that in their stones. Maybe they were creating a miniature version of something they held as a manifestation of the divine…a microcosmic representation of the macrocosm. Maybe they wished to place their dead in tombs consecrated by that shadowed image. Maybe they saw them as portals to the Otherworld… we cannot know.” But what we do know, is that they created this. That makes it ART! I know there are those who will disagree but there it is. Inspiration plus creativity = Art. I have visited a Country where their history was eradicated then rewritten. Yet I also saw numerous examples of art. Art is the silent witness and the true historian. There will always be those who cannot appreciate nor comprehend what they cannot measure and quantify, fortunately you can and do. Thank you Mary for bringing the shadowing to the forefront and making it an issue and to Sue for such a wonderful post. Please forgive me for running on like this. Lea

The stones are a technology, on one hand, and a technology we both underestimate and fail to understand.. They were created for a purpose, not ‘simply’ as art…but I agree with you, Léa…they are art also. Art was one of mankind’s earliest means of self-expression and remains our best means still today. We can capture and communicate through the symbols of art those things we do not find words for.

Run on, please!!! I loved this, especially being an artist in my heart and seeing even the most mundane daily things I do as an art form. There are so many ways to look at everything here, and what I love most and find most meaningful is that there are those among us who are willing to risk saying their opinions, and the truth be known, none of us knows whether these things are “the answer” or not, but it is good for us to all have our own opinions and to share them willingly and without fear of being ridiculed. I suspect that the ancient ones were able to do this for the most part, which is how such amazing things came into being. Thank you so much.

Thank you for still another great link. I have discovered so many wonderful things written by people who are in basic agreement with how we are all thinking here, or at least to the best of my understanding. And all of it through Sue, Stuart, and Steve’s blog posts. Wow, what a wonderful world this is!!!

There is much to be found but you will see little unless you search with an open mind and an open heart. Most tend to find only what they believe they are looking for, or not and end up empty handed. Try being here and having to explain what is going on there and why it appears nothing is being done about it to the French, Dutch, German… neighbours about me.

This is absolutely wonderful! It definitely made my day by all that wonderful reading and thinking. I am off course with my studies right now, but it was a journey well worth it as it helped me to remember so many things and to understand others, and then to be made aware of some things I did not know at all, but am in total agreement with. What a wonderful day to be able to fill it with so much of what is out there for us all to learn and think about. Thank you most kindly, Lea!

As for this article, I am beyond thrilled to read this. As someone who has a degree in archaeology, and who has worked in the field, I am so in tune with this. Archaeology always seemed so dry because all we ever studied was the evolution of sites and perhaps things in the environment that may have affected things such as people leaving the sites, or warfare that pretty much did the same thing or caused a lot of sacrifices, but hardly ever anything about the spiritual and other thinking of the people and what made them so different from others in the world.

I have re-read this article already several times and will read those that are also given at the bottom, and likely go back and reread it again. It answers so many mysteries for me – not answers them per se, but gives me a new direction that I think is more in tune with things I have thought a little about, but always put off because they seemed too unlikely because I couldn’t “prove” them, but what was I thinking? What do I need to prove to anyone? It is like art. Do I need to prove to someone why I perhaps did something in my art this way rather than some other way that is better known or accepted as a way to do it?

We live so much inside the confines of our minds, and it is sad because our minds WANT to go beyond the things we see and hear and come in contact regularly. And we are also confined by our world today with all of its distractions from a close relationship to the earth and all that is sacred within it. We really have to work hard to regain even a small amount of what is out there for us to know that can totally change the way we view the earth, the people and the natural things within it. Live is an endless adventure of trying to find ourselves once again, and I hope I live long enough to get there, but I know if I don’t, I will be back again in some form to start all over again. Thank you so much, Sue and Stuart and Steve for all that you have created for us. I feel absolutely wealthy in the things that really matter in this life!

Thank you again, and yes, it is leading me down a whole new path, and so I have to take some time to re-orient myself in thinking and to reread my studies before I rewrite my journal. I feel so light and as if I could indeed fly!!! I know perhaps it sounds strange, but I am sure you get the meaning of what I am saying.

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